Ishwarya's Blog, page 11

Writing Fit #1

Wonderfully written, PPD! Loved every single line and scene! Here is my best friend’s first short story up on WordPress, guys, you’ll love the magic her wand casts on the English language

Life. Dreams. Hopes and Happiness.

Hello Reader!

Well, I think it’s high time for another post, don’t you think? So, here I am!

Okay, so basically, with this post, I’m hoping to accomplish two different things.

One : Get rid of one of my littering short story drafts.

Two : Write a new post.

There you have it! This is going to be my first short story! Choosing from my unfinished drafts was going to be the most difficult part. But, I guess writing it is going to that much harder. I hope you’ll like the story anyway!

Happily Ever After with a Twist

The first warning bell sounded ominously at 8:35 am on a Monday morning. I was walking past the University Office. Wishing I had wings on my feet, and cursing the six buildings I would have to cross to reach my class, I broke into a run. My breaths came out as…

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Healthy Author

I hope everyone had a beautiful, blessed, colourful, happy and safe Diwali celebration this weekend. Wishing you all many wonderful celebrations to come and always keep that smile intact on your face.

Recently, my post number was increased by the announcement of the release of my book, some random musings and book reviews. So basically, it’s been a while since I really targeted something and elaborated on it in my style as an article. So, here I am and I’ve decided to take on the health and fitness of writers today.

The art of writing anything consists of the writer choosing the perfect spot to let inspiration strike and let their fingers do the talking of whatever the mind and heart urges. So the job is sedentary and when the writer is lost in their own world, it’s a challenge for them to think about the span of hours spent of sitting in one place for a prolonged period of time or about any other necessity – exercise, food and sleep being the prime ones. Concentrating on your characters and plot with all the force the universe blesses you with is just what every author needs but the said author also needs their immune system and all other organs kept running at a smooth pace to aid them in accomplishing their dreams of writing all they wish to write about.

Everything will come crumbling down if one single organ in your body starts conspiring against you, right?

*shuddering*

I don’t want that and neither do you.

All of us need to understand just how important fitness and health is, especially for sedentary workers like us. Tapping away on your laptop or scrawling away on that notebook all day shouldn’t be the only aim when it comes to the job. Calculate and analyse the other pros and cons that are to come with it. Look at the miracle God has blessed you with and plan out how you’re going to take good care of it alongside your dream job. Because remember that writing’s not the only activity we do.

Reading comes along with the package deal, whether it’s a hard copy or an E-Book. We’re planting ourselves in one place for a long time that way too, which doesn’t burn calories or induce physical health any more than while writing.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in health and fitness. All these are coming out of personal perspectives and experiences, and all the suggestions made by me will work out for some people at the same time they don’t work out for others. Choose what works for you best, and please research on any queries you may have through other sources to get the answer you need or please consult your doctor.

That said, let’s now start off with the first targets we lot abuse.

Sleep and food.

If I ask the question of how many writers are insomniacs, I’ll see a large crowd of hands raising. The quietness of the night stimulates an insane amount of desire to write till our heart’s content and as a result, bed time delays till even three in the morning and after finally heading to sleep, we’ll get up only around nine or ten (in some cases eleven), which dulls other productivity for the day. Or since a lot of other writers are either working or studying, they’d have to get up early, which comes down to the fact you only get two to three hours of sleep.

With the alterations in your sleep pattern, sustenance patterns and nutrition supply gets affected as well. And is it spinach rice or vegetable soup or any other healthy snack we have cravings for in between writing and staying up? Nope, it’s chocolates, caffeine and junk food we covet instead. Don’t deny it.

Writing gives us a lot of cravings and with all of these empty calories making their way into our bodies while staying physically inactive, it’s a red alert. The settling of these unwanted toxins instigate unnecessary stress amalgamated with the stress that already originates from the vast thought process, endless imaginations, the strong urge to complete the book, OCD – Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and writer’s block.

Add lack of sleep both due to writing on your notebook and incessant viewing (which can cause eye burns) of electronic screens to type on the word document or promote yourself and your books on social media to the list, and we have a huge problem.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Don’t panic now.

All you need is a plan to prioritise yourself.

We all desire to live long to write so many stories, don’t we? So make that a strong base and allow that concern to come down to your body, looking upon it as your best friend rather than a robot or machine to abide to your wishes. Unless you flex yourself to it, it’s not going to flex itself to you.

The first question that’s probably going to pop inside your heads is: How do I accommodate a fitness regime into the tight schedule I’m going through?

If you look upon exercise as doing a job you despise or an obstacle to break the flow of writing or thought process, we’re not getting anywhere. Stimulate your attitude to the joys of workouts. You’d be surprised with the kind of amazing advantages, along with gifting a healthy body, exercise waits to bestow upon a writer.

First off, workouts eliminate the stress factor by so many degrees. Cardio exercise is an active form of meditating if you want to put it in another way. What do we do when we meditate? Take in deep breaths and concentrate on one particular focal point to relax the senses. It’s the same attraction for exercise, only so much better. Your lungs expand and contract to a vast level, kicking out whatever toxin is in your respiratory system, and it’s pretty much what you need to get over some distressing thought as you take in those deep breaths. Your heart rate increases and the blood that’s racing through your body pushes out unwanted waste from all of your cells in the form of sweat and through the same perspiration, your stress flies out of the window. I underline once again these are all personal experiences. Just like other writers out there, I face the cruelty of obsessive compulsive disorder, but the cross trainer or treadmill gives me a huge hand in lowering the power of the effect it wishes to torture me with to the minimum level. One and a half hours straight on cardio with the speaker turned to a high volume, and I get down with a huge smile on my face. As a result, the obnoxious phase gets walloped away in a matter of two or three days.

Secondly, exercise is a huge stimulation to the brain. I’m a non-caffeinated author. I drink coffee only once or twice a year to be exact (No, I’m not kidding) and a lot of people have taken me for being one of those authors who prefers steaming mugs of coffee or tea to be depended upon for activating my creative neurons, but no they are not, and I haven’t ever tested the theory nor do I plan to. The workouts supply all the activation I need. That’s really where I get inspiration. With the music, either Taylor Swift or movie soundtracks, playing in the background, my thoughts immediately direct to my plot and so many ideas come demanding for my attention. The workouts induce strong memory power as well so when I go through the recently played list on my Google music as I sit myself down on my desk, I remember which song inspired which scene and it helps me to note all of them down.

Thirdly, exercise helps you to sleep properly. How many times have we fallen onto our beds and just stared at the ceiling because sleep refuses to embrace us in its peace? With most of your stress killed, pleasant thoughts planted back into your mind and your heart pulsing healthily, your systems are working properly and it’s much easier for you to fall asleep. Ten or eleven is the maximum you feel like staying up and you start becoming drowsy, perfectly prepared to hug your blanket. And when you sleep early, you get up early, fresh to continue from where you left off. As we all love the quietness of the night, you’d find it easy to get up at four or five in the morning and write in the blessed early hours with no disturbance. Go to sleep by nine or ten. Fix seven hours for your sleep and wake up early. I used to prefer writing at midnight and changing my sleep routine, which tampered with everything else the next day, but now I have changed my module and found this is quite amazing. Health is secured and you get the job done much better.

Can you see the wondrous ways exercise blesses you with?

The next question that naturally originates is: So what kind of exercise can I do?

I have already made a general post on health and fitness, proper diet, and the kind of exercises we can do, you can check it out here. Remember to always do what works out for you best.

We writers should take care of our eyes too. Spending too much time on the computer, laptop, phone or whatever else gadget you use to write or go online can affect your retinas and once it’s damaged, nothing can be done to recover it. Preserve the blessing you have. If you have social media profiles, minimise the amount of time you spend on it. When you’re writing, do it on your notebook with a pen you like. I have this white diary and use a purple ballpoint pen to write and after four or five days, I open my laptop to type it all down. It also helps to edit your story too. As you type it out, you get ideas to modify a sentence or an entire scene, in a trouble less way. And try not to look at the screen before bed-time, as it also plays a role in preventing you from falling asleep quickly. The brightness of it tricks your brain into thinking it’s still day and it won’t go to sleep.

Another important thing is, just because you exercise, it doesn’t mean you have the liberty to sit around after that. No. Every hour or so, get up and walk about your house. Or do some chores that are waiting for you, dish washing, laundry, cleaning, whatever. Don’t sit for a long time. Stretch your muscles and back and go do something active for a few minutes before resuming your story.

My kind request is that please don’t ever say you don’t have time to incorporate health and fitness in your schedule. We’re talking about the long run here, not just your well being at the moment. You may feel like ‘I’m all right now, what’s going to happen to me? I’m doing just fine. What’s with this girl rambling on and on?’

It’s wrong to think your body’s going to be the same always. You’re putting yourself more and more at risk with a bad diet, improper sleep and lack of exercise. We have so many beautiful stories to tell to the world, so many ideas are ready to inspire us, and we should be in ship shape to do all of that. And it’s not just us to be concerned about. We have our family and future family to think about, so please think twice before giving into the impulse of the moment.

Every author has different schedules, because we’re all either full time writers, working writers or studying writers. Plan out your fitness regime according to what goes well with your schedules and make sure you stick to it. You alone know what works for you best. So do it and let’s all be healthy and happy authors!

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Jai Shree Krishna

Love,

Deepika.

~~~~~

To check out the first installment of my new fantasy mythological saga, Ethereal: The Dawn of the Blue, please click here.

Phases

The kind of phases I’m going to target with this post is not the usual one you’d expect. Like, childhood or adolescence or adult hood or whatever the general quotient concerned with phases are. I’m taking on slightly different phases we go through for a certain period of weeks, or days or even months. These are all part of external sources, and not the internal hormonal workings of attitude changes or mood swings.

Theses external sources exist there and grab your attention whenever you choose to do so. Our minds are not equipped to absorbing them all at the same time, since we are unaware of a lot of them even being there, and ones that do seize our interest, club together and they form the phase. Since I’m definitely confusing you, let’s dive right to the examples of the sources for better understanding.

Writing.

Music.

Books.

Movies.

Environment.

A TV Show.

A holiday tour.

I’ve given you only a few examples, since these are the ones I’m mostly familiar with during my phases.

So it goes like this. Say, you’re reading a book. Right now, the one I’m reading is Wuthering Heights, which I began for the second time yesterday evening, but that’s not the only activity of this phase. Last night, I listened to Rihanna’s ‘This Is What You Came For’ for the very first time and it has been on repeat since. I’m also getting ready to celebrate Diwali with my family and relatives. As of now, there are only three sources to this phase. These three have amalgamated together and they exist as a single unit. But this unit is capable of expanding to accommodate more sources, since the main source is Wuthering Heights, so basically whatever else I enjoy during my experience of reading the book will hook onto it and will constitute the full phase. As a result, when I will remember my experience of reading Wuthering Heights after a month or so, the song, my excitement for the light festival, and the other things that attract me will add onto my memory. See what I mean?

Let me give you another example. This phase is very memorable, and it happened three years ago. I was in the final year of college, the semester was one and a half months through, and that was when Star Plus aired Mahabharat and me and my friends began watching it ardently. Soon enough, Vijay TV dubbed it into our mother tongue and every single day, we’d begin our talks with discussing what happened and gushing over the incredibly attractive male actors portraying the renowned characters. Mahabharat was the main source, and the ones that added onto it was my passionate watching of Life OK’s Mahadev (the dubbed Vijay TV episodes were available online for me), the release of a beautiful movie called Raja Rani and the soundtrack being on repeat every day, my excessive fanfiction reading, and my regular visits to our house in my hometown. Mahabharat supplied an excellent flavour to the phase as well as the increase of extra sources. I began writing the first instalment of my fantasy saga, The Dawn of the Blue (which got published recently. You can check it out here) at the beginning of 2014, my debut novel, Dance Dream, was launched in my college and then as I completed my final semester exams, Whatsapp began hyping on our phones and we were always messing around on it. So until Mahabharat came to an end (The show and the other sources created such a wonderful atmosphere in the house we lived in during it. As we have moved to another house, I miss that one so much), these various sources tagged onto my experience of viewing it so when I recall it now, these memories and the way I enjoyed them come to my mind too.

So have you ever had memorable phases? Feel free to share you experiences in the comment section.

I don’t think I’ll post again before Diwali, so advance Diwali wishes to everyone, dear friends and readers. May the festival bring in immense blessings, unite yourself with your loved ones for a colourful celebration and brighten your life. Stay safe while firing crackers, eat all the delicious sweets and meals and have a blast! Happy Diwali!

Jai Shree Krishna.

Love,

Deepika.

 

 

 

 

Dream Diary

I hate sleeping, because it’s a sign I have to stop writing for the day, but at the same time, I love it.

Sleep is actually one of the blessed abilities the Lord has bestowed us with. I really love that I’m human, that I can go to sleep, that I can dream, that I can wake up in the morning with a fuzzy brain and think back to the dream I had. Not everyone dreams every single night, it’s true, but being an author with a freakishly active brain that is prone to go into her fantasy world in the middle of a conversation, I guess it’s no surprise when I say I have a personal movie theatre installed in my head as soon as I close my eyes every night.

No one can really find out exactly which second their mind shuts off from consciousness. It’s like you’re lying on your bed, thinking about your day, being so happy with how you spent it, or being disturbed about a bad incident, or you will be thinking about the excellent movie you saw, or the delicious dish you made, or blushing into your pillow over the irresistible male lead starring in the book you finished reading, or about the future, or about the universe and how it can be your best friend or your worst enemy, or you’ll be just simply chanting prayers to yourself. And somewhere in the middle of all this, there it goes, bam! Your other senses close down on your environment like you’ve been hit with a club. It’s magical how that happens right?

I really don’t know how many times I’ve struggled to think about in which particular minute I fell asleep the previous night.

I was thinking about that and … how in the world did sleep happen?

Quite a few dreams have helped me out with my books, which I’m eternally grateful for. It’s like the dream offers the solution to a loose end for which I’d be pulling my hair out for all day.  But certain dreams make no sense at all, turning me OOC and cause me to scratch my head as soon as I wake up.

But I like writing down the interesting ones into what I call my Dream Diary. I usually don’t use them for my books as they are personal but certain interesting scenes have been thrown into the mix of my characters. Anyway, keeping a Dream Diary is really fun. Have you ever kept a Dream Diary before? I’m pretty sure many won’t entertain the idea, as it’s like displaying our own insanity right before our eyes, but when you read them after a month or so, all you’ll feel like doing is laughing and wishing you’d written more.

We all love finding out new things about ourselves, reading about ourselves, reading about the things we forget the next moment. And all in a personal way. The last thing I’ll do is read my dreams and deep thoughts with another person, let alone show them it. This is all a personal way to entertain yourself, giving yourself an opportunity to look deeper into your mind and heart.

Try keeping a Dream Diary for a week or so and enjoy the feeling.

Stay blessed.

Jai Shree Krishna❤

Ethereal – The Dawn of the Blue (Sample Chapter)

Hey, guys, I recently got my first book, The Dawn of the Blue, of my fantasy series, Ethereal, published and would like to share the opening chapter with you all. Happy reading!